23 ms·

I created an eBay account and bought an item, today I got indefinitely suspended

• charlesabarnes 4y ago
  I find it extremely strange that a company would encourage a credit card dispute. Wouldn't that affect the standing of eBay with credit card processors?
  • loopdoend 4y ago
    Not if the company knows they will win the dispute. It's an easy way to get rid of the complainer and send them to annoy someone else.
    • blindriver 4y ago
      That's not how it works. Even the act of having a customer dispute you hurts you are a merchant, so it's better for the merchant to avoid them entirely.
    • mynameisvlad 4y ago
      A lot of payment processors will charge regardless of outcome. Stripe's docs, for instance, mention this: > Once a cardholder initiates a dispute, it is no longer possible to avoid the fee. https://support.stripe.com/questions/dispute-fees-faq https://support.stripe.com/questions/dispute-fees-faq Additionally, according to Stripe at least, these disputes will remain on your "record" with the particular network: > All disputes, whether they’re won or lost, count towards your dispute rate, so the best strategy to avoid monitoring programs is dispute prevention. https://stripe.com/docs/disputes/measuring https://stripe.com/docs/disputes/measuring Even if the customer withdraws the request, it still counts and you still have to pay the fee. I'm sure eBay has better terms with looser thresholds, but even they are not impervious to the dispute system. At some point the networks can say "nah, we'd rather not deal with you" and there isn't much eBay could do about it.
  • Arch485 4y ago
    Yes, if people raise a lot of disputes it causes your processing fees to go up. Kayla did say eBay would "accept" the dispute though, so maybe there's some sort of process that makes it a refund?
    • radlad 4y ago
      Typically when you make a dispute the CC company reaches out to the vendor. The vendor can then make their case. Sounds like eBay was saying they wouldn't: they would just accept the loss. I believe they'd still be dinged though, as the first step of filing a dispute is "Yes, I have tried reaching out to the vendor first." Still, how likely is it that someone in customer support (Kyla) would have any involvement in those in fraud/finance (who presumably would respond to the dispute)?
      • bombcar 4y ago
        It sounds like an "unofficial" attempt to help, which can be disastrous. Kyla may KNOW that almost all credit card disputes go through because Ebay just eats them as the cost of business, but it may ALSO be the case that it could trigger something that makes them ban everything. Think of the scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R8GtrKtrZ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R8GtrKtrZ4
      • notch898a 4y ago
        > Sounds like eBay was saying they wouldn't They will. I was defrauded for a few hundred bucks by credit card thieves acting as me on ebay. eBay has a legal department that will fight you to the end of the earth when you file a dispute against ebay. I would contest something and they would send 40+ file packets explaining why I was wrong. Even though it was lies it takes forever to painstakingly prove 40 pages of lies. Eventually the bank doesn't want to deal with it anymore, there's a committee that spends maybe 10 or 15 minutes on your case and it takes 400 pages of truth to disprove 40 pages of lies, and denies your dispute and you have to sue. The best part is the pirates made the username 'piratearrgggghhhh@hotmail.com' or something to that effect as well as a tracking number for something shipped (to my city) an entire day before the purchase date and ebay included that in their discovery packet.... and ebay suspended the seller account for fraud .... I still lost lol.
  • ceejayoz 4y ago
    They've got enough volume to absorb the occasional dispute.
    • bombcar 4y ago
      Companies as large as eBay can make the credit card processor eat disputes as part of the agreement to use them (just like Costco is large enough to make Visa eat the entire credit card processing cost to have the Costco card).
    • notch898a 4y ago
      They don't absorb it. I was the victim of credit card fraud and someone set up another ebay account under my name, which then "bought" items from yet a second fraudulent ebay seller as a way to collect the ill-gotten credit card funds. I disputed the fraud with my bank. eBay fucking PILED and PILED on the paperwork to my bank, both at the initial and every appeals step I used to attempt to win the dispute. Fought them tooth and nail over a few hundred bucks. I ended up losing because they had a legal department going ham to make sure I would lose the credit card dispute where they had lawyers working 40+ hours a week vs whatever time I have on the side to fight a few hudred bucks. If you file a dispute with ebay it is like filing a dispute against an army of lawyers, good luck.
      • ceejayoz 4y ago
        "Absorb" here doesn't mean "they won't fight it", it means they'll have a manageable chargeback rate that doesn't risk them getting cut off from credit card processing.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • mnw21cam 4y ago
    I had a case recently where a company recommended that I kick off a credit card dispute. But it was because the company was calling in the administrators, and therefore they wouldn't have any reputation or assets very soon anyway.
  • adrianmonk 4y ago
    It seems possible that (since they've already reached the point of paying), the seller will go ahead and ship the order. Maybe the customer service rep (CSR) is just a very imprecise communicator and means to do the dispute if a problem does arise. (Other signs that the CSR is an imprecise communicator: (1) they called the suspension "indefinite" at one point and "permanent" at another, but these are different things, and (2) they said "all" new members get suspended, but they may have meant this happens fairly often and is pretty routine.) Another possibility is that the CSR simply didn't pay close attention and try to understand the situation. When the customer said they wanted to check the status, I think they meant it literally. They don't know that there's necessarily a problem yet, but they want to be able to check. The CSR may have concluded that the customer has an actual issue with never receiving the product.
• Jagombus 4y ago
  This definitely is a data privacy issue. They collect your data any they use it in some mathematical model to assess risk with some poorly thought out proxy, and boom: a bunch of people get falsely classified as risks to the platform. It's like the value added model for teachers, and Cathy O'Neil addresses this in Weapons of Math Destruction.
• nix23 4y ago
  >>Thank you for choosing eBay >>Take care bye >>>I am sorry it was not appealed.~Olga I love it, it's like a Monty Python Movie :)
  • KyleBerezin 4y ago
    It's worse than that "Hi there! I am sorry to hear your account is suspended.Due to limited verification process here we aren't able to review suspended accounts.Our support always review all the details on the account before providing the final decision. I am sorry it was not appealed.~Olga"
    • grouchomarx 4y ago
      surprised they let their twitter support team freehand these instead of using macros. "Person has been banned and is upset" copy/paste
      • joenot443 4y ago
        I imagine if/when this story hits tech news outlets, someone in the eBay management chain will be regretting that response. No reply at all would genuinely be better for them than something so half-baked and kafkaesque.
        • deleted 4y ago
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• latexr 4y ago
  > rafaelconde: Are you a person or a bot? > Kyla: you are currently talking with a live support That did not answer the question!
  • notfunnyrando 4y ago
    yes it did, they implied they're a bot... but bots have personalities, they are persons, just not biologically embedded
  • version_five 4y ago
    Sometimes people are given a stupid script and have to say things like that. It's fun to try and get them to break character, harder on chat than on the phone. Or it could be a chatbot
    • Traubenfuchs 4y ago
      I can't believe their words are written live, by humans. They must use decision support systems that provide them with text bricks, with "write custom answer" being one of the options.
      • transcriptase 4y ago
        My personal favourite is when you go to open a support chat and it makes you enter your issue into a text box. Then the chat starts, you repeat your issue to save time, and then regardless of the issue sitting on their screen twice, they ask what your issue is. I assume it’s either automatic or they’re penalized for not clicking the button that “says” it.
      • luckylion 4y ago
        I always assumed so as well, but that kind of suggests they either intentionally misspelled "restriction" as "restruiction" to make it seem like you're actually talking to a human that is writing their responses, or they didn't, and nobody has ever noticed, or the tickets don't ever reach anyone who has the ability to fix the error. I don't know. The replies are strange and sound like they're not written by a native speaker. If they had pre-selectable reply-blocks, wouldn't those be written by professionals?
• deleted 4y ago
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• stevespang 4y ago
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• notfunnyrando 4y ago
  that's super lucky I have never been able to buy anything from eBay successfully, either it's fraud, or customs-postage get so fucking idiotic they demand more in fees than the cost of the item... never again, not like it ever worked for me
  • Aeolun 4y ago
    Like the time when I bought an antique desk for $0.01, but the postage was $200. Still a good deal, but that was pretty silly.
    • ajolly 4y ago
      That was back when eBay was charging fees on the purchase price but not on shipping
• KingOfCoders 4y ago
  I tried to sell on Amazon, account + all accounts with same phone number were suspended before any interaction. We need some external arbitration if the company has a defining market share. Hope the EU tackles this next.
  • anonymouskimmer 4y ago
    Arbitration regardless of market share. Does Amazon not have arbitration clauses in its seller agreements?
    • rlpb 4y ago
      Those agreements usually permit the company to choose not to do business with you for any reason, including no reason. Usually that's fine since you can just use a competitor. But when a company has a significant market share and there are no realistically viable small business competitors, then consumers end up with no service for no reason. This is what I agree needs regulation.
      • anonymouskimmer 4y ago
        > Those agreements usually permit the company to choose not to do business with you for any reason, including no reason. At least for the linked article here the company isn't doing it for no reason, it's doing it for a libelous reason (calling the person a threat). Granted this libel is only published internally (pending a hack), so may not pass a legal threshold to be libel per se, but the actual reason for business termination may be arbitable.
  • juujian 4y ago
    I wonder what would happen if you get a new "recycled" phone number that had been used by someone else on ebay before.
    • LorenPechtel 4y ago
      And tracking exists for when a phone changes hands. We receive money by Zelle at times--and every established link blew up the day my account "changed" (T-Mobile/Sprint, there wasn't actually a change but it reported as such.) Why can't the other companies have access to something of the sort?
• NationalPark 4y ago
  Weird, does he say what the item was anywhere? I wonder if there are some things that are technically allowed but trigger fraud flags when newly created accounts buy them with certain payment providers. Either way, terrible customer service...
  • version_five 4y ago
    This is the most important question for me to try and understand this as well. It's a confusing piece of information to leave out, because if it's innocuous then not saying what it is is unnecessarily distracting, it it's plutonium, that might shed a different light on things
    • chungy 4y ago
      Honestly a thought that didn't occur to me on first reading. Definitely, if I had been suspended and my only transaction was buying, say, a calculator. I'd probably be asking "Why are calculators disallowed?" If I was buying plutonium, I'd leave that detail omitted.
      • luckylion 4y ago
        Would you make a Twitter thread about it if you had been trying something obviously illegal though? Wouldn't you just silently make a fist and say "damnit, they've crossed my plans again"?
  • migf 4y ago
    Yeah this reads like when SaaS companies complain about getting banned from AWS and leave out the part where people were using the software to run massage parlors or whatever.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • astura 4y ago
    These "OMG I was banned for no reason" posts are ALWAYS very low on specific details because if the specific details were included it would be obvious why they were banned.
• chrismorgan 4y ago
  In 2014 I purchased my first phone, via eBay. Its GPS unit was basically nonfunctional (twice I left it trying to get a fix in near-optimal conditions for more than half an hour, and the best it managed was observing two satellites), which was important for me at the time (I had resisted getting a phone for years and was only finally getting one because I was going to be out in unfamiliar wilds for a few weeks). I returned the phone. The seller denied receiving it. PayPal’s vaunted Buyer Protection rejected my claim. So I ended up $150 out of pocket. (Yes, this is somewhat irrelevant here. But I haven’t ever grumbled about this incident and this brought it to mind, as another case of the powerlessness of the individual against a Machine.)
  • JohnFen 4y ago
    eBay's "Buyer Protection" failed me recently too, causing me to lose about the same amount of money. I'm no longer using eBay as a result.
  • guestbest 4y ago
    I’ve never had a failed return/refund which is the only reason I use eBay over Amazon or Walmart(Shopify). eBay will even refund return shipping from the seller’s account if you use the eBay return shipping label service. I don’t use eBay to sell anymore even though for electronics it used to be a really nice way to get some money back from older purchases.
  • fer 4y ago
    Next back do a chargeback. You'll lose your PayPal/eBay account but you keep the money.
  • crazygringo 4y ago
    If you returned it with a tracking number that showed it as delivered, it shouldn't have mattered if the seller denied receiving it. eBay basically always sides with the buyer in that case, that's their policy. And if they didn't, you should have been able to escalate by phone to get it fixed. (I've had to do that three times over many years, and ultimately got it fixed every time I showed the tracking number proof of delivery -- I'd had to phone because the scam seller had put a fake different tracking number.) On the other hand, if you didn't use a service with a tracking number, or didn't put the tracking number into your return, then that was your mistake. Live and learn. :(
• genman 4y ago
  Considering that eBay actually forbids sellers to sell the same unique item outside of eBay when it is listed on eBay then it is a very concerning behavior. In this case it looks to me that the person on the eBay side got somehow offended by the tone of replies and wanted to have revenge.
  • sirsinsalot 4y ago
    Seems ... not legal
  • IncRnd 4y ago
    Where does eBay actually say that? I looked and couldn't find that. There are many people who crosslist with ebay and other sites. In fact, there are programs that help companies to crosspost in bulk.
    • genman 4y ago
      Perhaps I have too strong interpretation and you can list it elsewhere but you are prohibited in any way indicate this possibility on the item page or during the communication between the seller and buyer.
• donmcronald 4y ago
  > careful deliberation and investigation After 2m. Lol.
• pessimizer 4y ago
  Blacklist?
• estebarb 4y ago
  The same happened to my girlfriend with her EA account: just created it and the next day it was suspended, without any explanations or review options.
• Aeolun 4y ago
  I dunno about the reasons, but this chat session looks unutterably dumb. Why ask those questions if they have no bearing on the result?
• 310260 4y ago
  I had something similar happen to my account as well. I can't bid in any auctions on eBay though I can do Buy It Now. The restriction came out of nowhere and has been on my account for years with no explanation.
• United857 4y ago
  Perhaps his name matched someone on a US government sanctions list? eBay is a US company after all.
• ninth_ant 4y ago
  Not mentioned here is that ebay processes making these decisions, including bots and support, may be using external signals to make these decisions. Have you ever caused them trouble when using the PayPal account you connected to your eBay accounts? How about with any of any of eBay’s (many) subsidiaries? Can your email or any other personal info provided to eBay be linked to risky activity (from their perspective) if eBay uses a service to analyze that risk? This is not to say eBay is correct or justified in blocking your account. But just noting that it’s not as simple as: 1. makes account 2. Buy product 3. Banned. — They have other signals available as well.
  • pocketsand 4y ago
    And their signals may well be noisy. This is why it is infuriating. They have some model and some threshold. If an account goes over the threshold, they're banned. For whatever reason, OP ends up over the threshold, and eBay is completely unwilling to put any customer service effort into reviewing whether they model may have misclassified OP's account. Having the service be completely off limits for a certain % of companies because it's too hard to assess errors is part of the business strategy, and it's an absolutely awful experience for the small number of people it affects. Luckily, OP can probably live without eBay. Now imagine what happens in scenarios like these, which show up every few weeks on HN and other news media. 1. Sellers who make a living off sites like eBay who have their livelihood thrashed when model goes Beep on their account for some reason. 2. Businesses (and their customers) that rely upon cloud services that have their accounts closed indefinitely for unspecified reasons. 3. People locked out of their Gmail/similar accounts for unspecified reasons, who then lose access to every account tied to those accounts. If you've ever been in one of these situations, it turns into a Kafkaesque dystopian runaround at best, and complete blackout at worst. I ended upon on the wrong end of an indefinite suspension from Google. I had to appeal a dozen times with no insight from them. I ultimately tracked it down to an off-by-one error on a payment card zip code. I had moved across town and my zipcode went up by one. Google didn't like that and I was a threat until I figured it out. Took months.
    • JohnFen 4y ago
      This is a good reminder for something that's been true about running a business, whether enormous or tiny, since forever: If you are dependent on a single source for anything business-critical, your business is at risk. Period. This is why most companies go to great lengths to avoid that situation.
• marssaxman 4y ago
  Twitter has a similar on-boarding process.
  • interestica 4y ago
    I helped someone set up a basic account. It was immediately suspended until they allowed their phone number to be added "for verification". ...
• KyleBerezin 4y ago
  I'm curious about the background here. It certainly seems bad, but I could imagine quite a few scenarios where this is expected. One would be making a second account to bid on your own item. I want to make the point, I'm not accusing him. I just am curious about the background.
• qup 4y ago
  eBay is a master class on how to get worse every year. I used to sell there, but it's just so hostile now, to both buyers and sellers. Particularly sellers, though.
  • pancrufty 4y ago
    I think eBay has always been terrible. The website was awful and it went downhill fast after 2007 I think. I still remember how I was able to include javascript and CSS that affected the whole page in 2005. Good times. I was using the former to enable Clippy in IE
    • qup 4y ago
      Amazing. I think it was always a pretty shit website, but now the policies have caught up. They're like a governmental beauracracy now.
• 1970-01-01 4y ago
  It's not you, it's them. I've been 'indefinitely suspended' thrice from eBay. Whenever their extra secret suspension metrics DB gets an update, your suspension reasons are discarded, and you can appeal to reopen your business. I've found 'indefinitely' is about 4 years.
  • luckylion 4y ago
    Interesting idea, if you're in the EU: when they ban you, ask them to delete your PII. Either you get unbanned because they're no longer storing the fact that they banned you, or they need to provide a reason for storing it against your expressed wishes. "We want to, lol" will probably not fly, so I expect they'd need to give some info on the reason of the ban. If it's law-related ("you're on a blacklist from the government, but we can't tell you"), you'll get a hint. If they just say "our magic ML blackbox predicted the probability of fraud was above average", I doubt that will be considered a valid reason. If they actually have a valid reason (e.g. someone with the same name already had an account at that address), you'd at least know what's up and can fight that head on. I don't know though, maybe they'll just tell you to get lost and that they're not going to delete it and also not tell you why, and then just pay a $50 fine 5 years down the line when some data protection agency finds the time to do something.
    • Nextgrid 4y ago
      Just FYI, I was in the same situation and did so and they never got back to me. GDPR enforcement is almost non-existent (especially in cases where they need to investigate and potentially litigate instead of sending canned replies) in my country (and most others by the looks of it) so there's nothing you can do in practice.
      • luckylion 4y ago
        Sad to hear. It's annoying when you get a bunch of new regulation that is self-selected-enforcing and only the law-abiding citizens and companies will follow it while others ignore it without consequences. It's spotty in Germany, since it's set up at the state level and depends on where the company is located. In my experience, Hamburg's DPO is terrible, slow and mostly unwilling. Berlin's is very slow but not incompetent. Hesse's is quick and responsive and feels like they have a good understanding of tech and want to get things done.
• deleted 4y ago
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• jimt1234 4y ago
  I've had an eBay account for over 20 years. I stopped using it a few years ago, then sometime in 2022 I decided to sell something, so I logged in and posted my item. The next day, eBay sent me an email saying that my account was suspended. I tried to login, and sure enough, locked out. I just left it alone; I was pretty much already done with eBay anyway. I did nothing. Well, out of curiosity, a few months later, I tried to login to my eBay account again, and it worked fine. I was able to list items for sale again. The message telling me that my account was suspended was still in my eBay Inbox, but I never received any sort of explanation. The whole experience was pretty lame. My guess is that since the account was idle for a few years, then the account suddenly tried selling something, so the algorithms detected this as potential fraud. That sorta makes sense. My beef, really, is that the account was suspended with no explanation and no way to "unsuspend" it, but it "unsuspended" itself, like by magic. Weird.
  • dehrmann 4y ago
    The bit I'll add about potential fraud is this is what a reused password from a password dump looks like.
  • aynyc 4y ago
    Probably password dump and fraud attempt on eBay side. They aren’t going to explain that to hackers. I had the same thing and I managed to reactivate after I pinged support. It was rather painless than I was expecting. I don’t have a lot of love for eBay.
    • amerkhalid 4y ago
      > They aren’t going to explain that to hackers. The idea of security through obscurity needs to die. I wish companies shared their logic behind these decisions. Sure bad people will take advantage of it in short-term. But, in long-term, most of the loopholes should be discovered and fixed.
      • kube-system 4y ago
        Fraud is not a well-bounded problem like authentication. There is no cryptographic way to prevent fraud. Using behavioral analytics is about the best you can do from behind a keyboard, and if you share the way you're measuring it, people can change their behavior to work around it. One alternative is to put more onerous restrictions on users, so that it is hard or expensive for them to buy or sell on eBay, in which case people may just buy/sell elsewhere. The other alternative is to insert more humans into the process, at which point, you start to look less like an auction website and more like an auction house.
• daneel_w 4y ago
  "Once again this is Maria Kyla." - just in case anyone had any doubts. For some reason the mere tone of the support person's communication makes me think of chinese eBay/Ali-X retailers' made-up names used in support requests in order to appear more appealing and "familiar" to western customers. During my 7-8 years of buying stuff off of AliExpress I've been on the thankful receiving end of support from "Windy" (Wendy), "Marry" (Mary), "Magret" (Margaret) and "Amily" (Emily) to name just a few.
  • ricardobayes 4y ago
    That's not the issue though, that's just a simple courtesy, would you be happier if they used their original name, perhaps in unreadable (to me) chinese characters?
    • jonatron 4y ago
      On amazon you get company names and addresses like shenzhenshihenghongxingkejiyouxiangongsi at LONGHUAQUGUANLANJIEDAOGUANLANHUANGUANZHONGLU370HAO.
      • rustyhalo 4y ago
        and it is perfectly readable and can be translated back into chinese, for instance this can be translated into 深圳市恒宏兴科技有限公司 at 龙华区观澜街道观澜湖安关中路370号 but it did look like someone touched their yubikey by accident.
    • LorenPechtel 4y ago
      Yeah, people tend to not be as happy with someone they can't see as a person--and not being able to say their name is part of that.
      • daneel_w 4y ago
        Absurd statement in the context of chat/e-mail support. Of course you're not gonna get to see what the staff looks like. And no customer ever became happier nor felt more "connected" with the advent of first-name basis support staff in chat/e-mail instead of anonymous styled "you're talking with Support, how can I help you?", just like no customer is ever impressed with sales people gussying them up by repeating their name during conversation. It's just product packaging, not a support quality bump.
• albertopv 4y ago
  It's been about a decade since last time I bought on eBay, for me trust is very important and I don't trust eBay anymore since then.
• soylentcola 4y ago
  Sounds exactly like what happened with me and PayPal (guess they still share that). Transferred a few hundred bucks to a PayPal account I hadn't used in a while. Got banned with no option for reinstatement or explanation. They basically just kept my money and said there was nothing I could do about it kthxbai. I understand verification for anything flagged as risky. I hadn't used the account in years so I can see why it might show up that way. But no, there's no way to verify my identity or speak with anyone who can tell me anything. That money just went poof (for me at least).
  • pxx 4y ago
    Usually PayPal gives you your money back after 180 days (after it is mostly chargeback-proof). Was that not even an option here?
  • iforgotpassword 4y ago
    Dammit, there was this post here on HN a while back how someone got their account back through the forced arbitration process. So if you care enough about that money, that would be an option. Hopefully someone can find it again, I'll keep looking some more. EDIT: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/i-fought-the-paypal-and-i-won https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/i-fought-the-paypal-and-i...
  • dehrmann 4y ago
    You can report them to government agencies for theft.
  • jo6gwb 4y ago
    Suggest you submit a complaint to the CFPB - there is a webpage and useful instructions for doing so. Ebay is a regulated financial institution and will have to answer to the CFPB as to how they will be resolving your complaint. You can also submit a complaint to your state financial regulator - they usually have more teeth than the CFPB but take a little bit more time.
  • PetahNZ 4y ago
    Same kind of issue. Signed up for PayPal, instantly banned before I could even do anything. Email support just said there is no recourse and no explanation why. Ended up ringing the support phone number and they managed to unban the account.
• smithcoin 4y ago
  I had the same thing happen to me. I signed up to ebay for the first time, sold a single item before I had everything filled out (I was surprised at how fast my inventory moved). I couldn't enter in my payment information (Chase Bank) and my SSN wouldn't validate on their website for whatever reason. In fact, it seems like I am in this predicament because the website wouldn't function properly. Now I am out the several thousand dollars for the inventory I moved and I have no course of reconciliation. Any attempts at customer service end up in useless call centers who "cannot help me as we need to reduce fraud in their marketplace". Fraud? I sold and shipped the item. They must need money so bad they took mine.
  • Terretta 4y ago
    For what it's worth, the phrases … > how fast my inventory moved … and … > for the inventory I moved and I have no course of reconciliation … don't sound like an individual trying to yard sale a used item. They sound like a seasoned seller complaining about a channel.
    • smithcoin 4y ago
      First time seller listing a bunch of used receipt printers I had lying around that I couldn’t figure out how to ecycle.
  • crazygringo 4y ago
    Why would you list something before finishing setting up your bank account info? Even worse, why would you ship something before that? And why would you start on eBay with an item of several thousand dollars which is waaay higher than 99% of items? I'm surprised anyone would even consider buying something at that price when you had zero positive feedback or any reputation at all. None of this makes any sense to me.
    • stingrae 4y ago
      It seems reasonable to me. I've bought things on ebay many times but never sold anything. I was thinking about selling something recently and didn't even think that adding a bank account for payout would cause any problems (because why would it? I've never had any issues linking my bank account to venmo, paypal or any other third party)
• londons_explore 4y ago
  They normally do that if they think you have another ebay account. Are you sure you didn't have an account from years ago somewhere? If they have any evidence of you having two accounts, they will ban all except the oldest one. And they will refuse to tell you this. If you have a father/mother with an identical name (happens frequently in some communities), then you have to share an account with your father/mother to not hit this restriction.
  • JohnFen 4y ago
    When will companies learn that full names are almost never unique?
  • no1groyp 4y ago
    Not true you can have multiple accounts i have multiple storefronts on ebay with totally different accounts linked to different emails but with the same primary address
  • astura 4y ago
    Not true - eBay doesn't disallowed multiple accounts. At one time it was considered "professional" to buy and sell with different accounts. Specifically, don't buy using your seller account. I have one account for buying and one for selling myself. There's zero hiding it - my name is globally unique. https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/identity-policies/multiple-accounts-policy?id=4232 https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/identity-policies/multipl... >Can I use one account for buying and one account for selling? Do the same policies apply to each? Yes, you can use the accounts in whatever way works best for you. Buying and selling policies apply equally to all accounts though, so you'll need to meet our buyer and seller standards across all your accounts.
• iforgotpassword 4y ago
  I had a fun experience too last year. After not using my account for ages I sold a few items. Was sceptical because unlike in the old days, ebay would relay the money now and keep it a few days. However, everything worked fine, got my money, except that there was this one item where the buyer just didn't pay. When I contacted him after a week they said they're traveling and would pay a week later, so this repeated for a while until I finally have up. So I wanted to cancel the transaction, but it turned out you can only do this within 30 days. The FAQ just states after that, I should resolve the issue with the buyer. According to them, they also didn't have an option to cancel. So I had this open transaction in my ebay profile which I could only mark as payed for, but not remove in any way. Two months later it was still there. I logged in just now to check, and it is finally gone. Ebay is full of these half-baked workflows and broken functions. It is mind boggling how even today there still seems to be at least three different UI styles, depending on what part of the site you interact with. One "modern" theme that is very flat, has no borders around anything, then a somewhat older one with more boxes and lines and smaller margins, and yet another one that looks even older. Oh and now that I think of it, I have one stored search in my account that I cannot delete. Everytime I do and refresh the page, it is back again.
  • pxx 4y ago
    The experience for sporadic sellers is probably not very good because that's not where eBay really makes its money from. I'm happy they still allow it though; sites like Amazon have just made it impossible to work as somebody who is just trying to declutter. You probably ended up paying commission on the unpaid item. This is why you should just not allow buyers extensions at all. Travel is no excuse. If they can send messages they can pay.
    • iforgotpassword 4y ago
      Yeah, I learned my lesson from that, but still, how do you come up with this workflow? How can I resolve anything with the buyer directly? If we agree on not doing the transaction, how would I get rid of that thing in my seller dashboard? Like, just allow cancelling it indefinitely. What's the point here!? Also, agree on the weirdness of the buyer. What did he gain by keeping to pretend he wants the item if really he didn't? I mean I didn't care about the slowness, was just decluttering a bit, so I wasn't in a hurry or anything.
• ricardobayes 4y ago
  "Careful deliberation" was 2 minutes? lol
• 404mm 4y ago
  This is like playing Elder Scrolls… lol "Let's talk about something else." "Goodbye"
• tpict 4y ago
  I had a similar situation happen with Mercari last year. I bought some used audio equipment and 30 minutes later my account was terminated for "prohibited items or conduct". I still wonder every now and then what part of the listing triggered the banhammer. Guess who never used Mercari again?
• natvert 4y ago
  Ebay is terrible. I once sold a nice (and expensive) smartphone on ebay. The buyer complained that it did not arrive as described. The phone was fine, but whatever, I thought ebay would just refund the payment and have the buyer return the phone, right? Nope, ebay refunded the buyer and let them keep my phone! No recourse... nothing. Ebay let the buyer steal my phone!
  • pancrufty 4y ago
    That’s standard. This scam is nearly 2 decades old, except back then it was done via PayPal. I think you’ll find more by searching “PayPal chargeback scam”
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • kube-system 4y ago
    This is exactly why they have an itchy finger on the ban button for new accounts. There is no easy solution to the "I got a brick in the mail" problem, from either the buyers or the sellers side.
• SubiculumCode 4y ago
  im going to guess you were using a vpn.
• jarrell_mark 4y ago
  Same thing happened to me with Activision. Found out one day my account was randomly banned from playing Warzone 2.0 with absolutely no way to get it unbanned.
  • panax 4y ago
    Similar thing happened when I returned to playing Rust after a long break. I had even just upgraded my HDD specifically to get Rust to load faster. Maybe 2 days after upgrading my HDD I get a VAC ban on it(my only VAC ban) for no apparent reason from their third party anti cheat software Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC). I tried to appeal to EAC but they won't give any info. I think what could have set it off was either 1) the hard drive upgrade 2) maybe my anti-virus since it once tried to sandbox it and run it virtualized or 3) EAC scanned my hard drive and found that I have unrelated source code/python scripts on it since I'm a dev. w/e I'm done with it but I don't like having a VAC ban on my account for no reason :/
• Lacerda69 4y ago
  the only thing worth using at ebay are the tiny classified ads
• terinjokes 4y ago
  I had a similar experience with DeepL recently. I made a personal account using their free plan to try out their API. My account was banned before even completing the signup flow, and customer support had no details they could provide me.
• extr0pian 4y ago
  I've had my eBay account suspended two or three times. All of them was because of suspicious activity in that I was using a VPN. I had to connect with someone on their customer support team to get it unlocked. I guess that's understandable if someone else using the same IP address is doing something malicious, but I think this could all be avoided if they set up sane 2FA measures. Just yesterday I logged in and it prompted me to choose how to receive a code - email or SMS. I chose email, received the code then entered. Then, they told me I had to authenticate again via SMS. I really wish they would implement standard software based TOTP so I could use something like Aegis or passOTP.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• vignesha 4y ago
  I have had a similar experience, submitted an auction bid once but for some reason couldn't log back in into my ebay account for a week, looks like e-bay wasn't interested in getting my money :).
• ilamont 4y ago
  Can anyone offer insights into why the eBay website is so bad for sellers? They're a multibillion dollar business. It doesn't just look old, there are many basic missing features, integrations are feeble (such as the recently discontinued Shopify connection), and there are so many stupid workarounds required.
  • pancrufty 4y ago
    My guess is that it was hacked together and they piled hacks upon hacks for decades. There’s no chance anyone can or wants to fix that. Let’s not forget it came out in 1995 so the codebase must be a nightmare now.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• ravenstine 4y ago
  Etsy should eat eBay's lunch. eBay's site is pretty cruddy, they seem to think it's cool that sellers inflate shipping costs (often to hilarious extents), and now it's become easy to get stuck in some kind of authentication loop or even get suspended.
• LegitShady 4y ago
  Something similar happened to me with Twitter way back in the day, maybe 2016 or 2017? I made an account, followed some famous people, and then got an email saying my account was suspended and the only way to unlock it was to scan my drivers license and send it to them. Since there's no way I'm providing that to twitter, I just abandoned it, maybe a bookmark folder and some bookmarks, and that's that. The fraud algorithms at all of these sites are very sensitive and you can be locked out of a service for literally no reason.
• shadowgovt 4y ago
  It is basically up to eBay whom they do business with. ... of course, wasting potential new customers' time by having them set up an account and then cancelling it is a bad user experience.
• winstonprivacy 4y ago
  My guess is that OP isn't giving us all the details. Most likely he's engaged in some untoward behavior elsewhere and has ended up on a high risk list. These services are actually really great at reducing fraud for sellers.
  • 111111101101 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
• Someone1234 4y ago
  The support questions seemed interested in the account's address. I wonder if that address was in a restricted country, known mail forwarding vendor, or PO Box? To be clear, I think the way this was handled and tech company's whole "we cannot tell you why" stuff is unacceptable. But typically we can make a fairly reasonable guess why they might restrict the account, we just need more information (e.g. VPN? What was the item? Is your address unusual? PayPal account's history?).
  • greyhound_7 4y ago
    Me too. Definitely a possibility that they live at an address associated with a scammer, or that address is on some restricted list.
• WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
  I guess there may be a thriving market of second-hand accounts with good reputation, or "will buy or sell your shit for a percentage" services, with helpful support like this.
• IncRnd 4y ago
  Whenever I chat (on ebay or on my phone), my messages are on the right, and the other persons messages are on the left. My question therefore is, "Is this a real situation and a real chat?" There is really no information given.
  • layer8 4y ago
    Do a Google image search for “ebay chat” and you’ll find other examples that look like that, e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/HumansBeingBros/comments/8jej1d/ebay_customer_service_being_a_supportive_bro/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HumansBeingBros/comments/8jej1d/eba.... This may be the desktop browser version.
    • IncRnd 4y ago
      Why do believe a twitter post that you haven't verified, but you disbelieve someone who tested this? I already did an ebay chat before I commented. Doing that I saw that my comments were always on the right. That's what I wrote in my comment that you replied to. My chat was on the desktop browser version. Ebay may have a different chat mechanism that works like the twitter post, but the ones I've tried do not work that way. Given that, the twitter post and the reddit you linked appear to be people poorly spoofing ebay chats.
      • layer8 4y ago
        I didn’t disbelieve you. You didn’t mention desktop browser, and that was only my guess. The link I posted also was just one example, image search yields more examples. What I provided is likely evidence that Ebay chats can indeed look like that. Here is another example (about two thirds down the page): https://www.autods.com/blog/dropshipping-tips-strategies/increase-ebay-positive-feedback/ https://www.autods.com/blog/dropshipping-tips-strategies/inc... Why would that blog article fake an ebay chat? Why would all the examples fake the chat in the same way?
        • IncRnd 4y ago
          > Here is another example (about two thirds down the page): https://www.autods.com/blog/dropshipping-tips-strategies/inc https://www.autods.com/blog/dropshipping-tips-strategies/inc... That's a good find. It's possible that these are from a different chat mechanism or are old. I put more stock in that page than I do for a post on reddit or twitter. Your page has quite a bit of explanatory background information, unlike the social media posts. This is how desktop chat appears for me. https://ibb.co/WzLH6Yg https://ibb.co/WzLH6Yg . The blue Hello box on the right is my typing, which shows a definite difference from what is shown on the Twitter post. I used ibb to upload the image, since it was the first google result for uploading images.
• quechimba 4y ago
  I signed up using my real details and a few days later I got an email saying I was banned for life for suspicious activity. They wouldn't explain why, just that this decision was irreversible.
• cwoolfe 4y ago
  Yes but he doesn't say what he was trying to buy. Drugs? Guns? Money laundering? There's got to be more to the story here...
  • mtmail 4y ago
    In the screenshotted chat he says he's planning to buy old/vintage stuff.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • bluetidepro 4y ago
    Why would that even matter? If eBay approved/listed the item he was buying from another user, it should be fine to buy. This wouldn't make it HIS fault? If anything, it would suspend the person listing the item.
    • cwoolfe 4y ago
      yeah good point. his account shouldn't be suspended as a buyer; it'd be the seller at fault. Really, it would be eBay's fault for letting a seller list a disallowed item.
    • y-c-o-m-b 4y ago
      I can confirm that last part. I've bought many CD keys for games and software off Ebay and each time the seller gets removed within 24-72 hours, but it has never affected my account.
• habosa 4y ago
  Same thing happened to me as a seller. I sold a single Nintendo Switch game for a very normal price ($30, used). I delivered the item on-time and with tracking. My account was suspended forever with no chance for review.
• 6510 4y ago
  I'm honestly looking forwards to the EU digital identity. From both the user and the developer side I don't want to deal with a process where one can either spawn a million accounts in 5 minutes or be subjected to validation processes full of false positives and negatives. Investing in startups with many free users who might not be people?
• praveen9920 4y ago
  Speculating but when any online companies do this, that usually is because the users IP or Phone Number are marked as “unsafe” by some data providers. As both of them can be recycled, it puts customers in weird situations like this
• pancrufty 4y ago
  Here’s what happens: 1. Service launches 2. They get loaded with scams 3. They implement safety mechanism 4. Repeat cat and mouse game until the list of “if/else ban” reaches the distance between moon and earth Basically all of these transactional companies lock themselves into corners and make life hell for everyone. It happened with PayPal, it happens with eBay and it’s starting to happen with Stripe.
• kungfooguru 4y ago
  Exact conversation I had with support after they suspended me after I sold something for the first time, but before I mailed the item. Its like they just randomly permanently suspend people.
• Animats 4y ago
  A useful first step, since eBay is in California, is to exercise your California "right to know" right to obtain copies of all information eBay has on you.[1] Ebay has a procedure for this, as they are required to.[2][3] It doesn't require a login. That should yield more information. [1] https://www.oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa#sectionc https://www.oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa#sectionc [2] https://www.ebayinc.com/company/privacy-center/privacy-notice/state-privacy-disclosures/ https://www.ebayinc.com/company/privacy-center/privacy-notic... [3] https://ocswf.ebay.com/privacy https://ocswf.ebay.com/privacy
  • chrisshroba 4y ago
    In my experience with doing data downloads from companies, they often don't contain everything, even though they're legally required to. I wouldn't be surprised if eBay doesn't include specific notes about this person's account suspension in their data dump (and I'm not sure that such information is even necessarily required to be included).
  • zerr 4y ago
    What about Paypal?
  • Nextgrid 4y ago
    Maybe the Californian law is better enforced by the regulator (or maybe it gives you grounds to sue on your own) but keep in mind this doesn't work with the GDPR - I had a similar problem with eBay and they flat out ignored my e-mail to their DPO. GDPR enforcement is near non-existent even for simple cases so there's no recourse for you in practice, as the regulation doesn't give you grounds to sue by yourself and you're at the whim of the (useless) regulators.
    • 411111111111111 4y ago
      Gdpr does get enforced https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ It just takes a long time and the entity in question will likely drag it out for as long as they can, possibly indefinitely if they've got the finances to do so.
• jsimzeroone 4y ago
  The reminds me of an incident that made me (kind of unfairly) boycott Bed Bath and Beyond for the last few years -- I lost my wallet and didn't have credit cards for a bit, and when I tried to pay at BB&B with a check, they used a machine that told them I was too much of a risk, though I had an 800+ credit rating and thousands in my checking account. I complained and researched and eventually realized that basically all retailers use this check verification system that uses AI that considers your checks too great a risk if you don't normally pay by check -- so the idea that you can use a check in an emergency is really an idea from the last century. This bad decision by eBay seems like the same sort of thing -- machine learning teaches the AI that people who don't regularly buy and sell are far more risky than people who do (which of course they are), so new or occasional buyers/sellers look like a huge risk, and get randomly bounced.
  • brianwawok 4y ago
    As a business decision, are they ok with failing 9 good checks to block 1 bad check? I think most retailers would be.
    • lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Probably because they only get 2 checks per year. And the likelihood of someone trying a scam given that they are using a check is already high.
    • kube-system 4y ago
      Most retailers are okay with denying all checks.
  • labster 4y ago
    So far we’ve invented AI to make predictions based on persistence of current conditions, and another one that threatens users with misinformation. Truly, the digital future we have been promised.
  • kube-system 4y ago
    Probably TeleCheck. Your credit score is irrelevant, it is likely denying you because you never use checks in that way. It's anomaly analysis. At the other end of a wire, both of these circumstances appear identical: * a criminal who stole the checkbook of someone with an 800+ credit score and used it for a transaction the rightful owner never has * someone with an 800+ credit score and used it for a transaction they never have I'm not sure why anyone would use checks in an emergency though, I'm surprised BB&B even still accepts checks.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• paulrpotts 4y ago
  This is strange. I've had an eBay account since 1999. I've used it very irregularly over the years - sometimes I'm buying things regularly, occasionally I'll do a "burst" of selling for a few months, then go for years without selling anything. I've never seen anything remotely like this suspension.
• Sunspark 4y ago
  I wonder what it was that he purchased? I am sad that eBay deletes inactive accounts. I lost all the historic feedback I had because I didn't go back in within 30 days of notice. I don't know that it's necessary to do that. How much disk space could a list of account names take up in an indexed database table?
• anigbrowl 4y ago
  Someone in the Twitter replies astutely asked why the graphic shows 'Kyla's side of the chat, since every messaging app places the owner's text on the right hand side, and the respondent's on the left. I just logged into eBay and it's the same there - suggesting that this entire exchange is faked.
  • luckylion 4y ago
    Someone replied to that comment suggesting that's what happens when you export the chat session. I've never talked to Ebay support, can you try with your case and check?
    • anigbrowl 4y ago
      I see no such option, and I'm going to start a fake dispute to see if one appears. I doubt eBay web app is exporting chat sessions in jpeg format.
  • int_19h 4y ago
    eBay Twitter account responded to that thread, and they didn't claim that it's faked, just doubled down: https://twitter.com/AskeBay/status/1628774965800583168 https://twitter.com/AskeBay/status/1628774965800583168
    • anigbrowl 4y ago
      Corporate accounts never engage with a dispute issue in public. I don't think that means anything.
      • int_19h 4y ago
        It really depends. I've seen corporate accounts calling out customers for not actually submitting a complaint or lying about it before.
        • anigbrowl 4y ago
• j_crick 4y ago
  This happened to me too, just last year. I had an old eBay account, about fifteen years old, but I forgot even the email it was registered to, so I made a new one. Then I bought a small item I wanted, a watch strap for 20$. It had arrived and was exactly what was advertised. Cool, I thought. Two months passed, and out of the blue my account got banned for “risk to the community” reasons. During these two months I did literally nothing on eBay, didn’t even visit the website at all. The seller didn’t contact me later, but left me a good feedback after my purchase. Like, what is this I don’t even vOv The email about account termination said that I could appeal it, but eBay’s support portal didn’t have any links to account termination appeal process or form or contact. I tried to contact support for some other reason, chatted with what seemed to be humans, who transferred my “case” between them several times and in the end told me, in short, that “we can’t tell you what you did wrong and we will not unban you because risk things”. Weird and a little sad.
• robtaylor 4y ago
  I am able to buy, but not able to sell. eBay say I am connected to a dodgy account that was last active years ago. I am not connected to it - but must be some IP match or fingerprint from shared office or the like. Zero ability to feedback or get anywhere from eBay. The logic is rubbish as well, I am dodgy so stop me from selling... but fine to buy?! How?! eBay - sort your shit out.
• buildbot 4y ago
  Ebay is going down hill- I recently foolishly purchased a too cheap item, and then did more research and saw it was a fraudulent listing. I contacted ebay support, they told me to contact the seller as they were not the a tual seller and “could not cancel it”, and that if it was fraud I should use their reporting system. I did, they quickly removed the item, but STILL REFUSED TO REFUND ME - I have an email from their fraud team alerting me that the listing was fraudulent, but they are happy to keep holding my money for another 7 days, in case the fraudulent item actually ships… insanity
• negamax 4y ago
  People are still using eBay?
• kabdib 4y ago
  I had an account on a popular gaming platform banned for fraud. Fortunately, I knew devs on the team, and they dug into it and found a bug. Account unbanned. Meanwhile, support wouldn't tell me anything. Final suspension, we will tell you nothing, there is no more information, etc. I have a very dim view of this type of filtering. If it's a bug in eBay's systems, they will never fix it.
• pengaru 4y ago
  Slightly off-topic, but I'm curious if anyone knows the best established way to accept payment for items sold+shipped through sites like ebay. I've heard enough horror stories from sellers claiming they'd shipped items only to have the buyer falsely claim it never arrived or wasn't what was advertised to get reimbursed/chargeback, and never return the item or return a box of rocks. This has prevented me from selling anything online outside of in-person CL sales for over a decade now. Ages ago I sold many things on ebay that were shipped without difficulty, accepting paypal, none of this fuckery, but times have changed. Is there a safe way to do this sort of business as a seller today? It really sucks to not have access to the broader market for selling some niche items, esp. in my rural region w/low population density.
• cptaj 4y ago
  I've said this for years: Online platforms beyond a certain size need to comply with some form of due process regulation. If thousands or even millions of people are making a living in your ecosystem, you shouldn't be able to ruin their livelihoods arbitrarily. This is usually done by underpaid and shockingly untrained workers doing rushed reviews of a profile and clicking the nuke button without remorse or consequence.
• michaelteter 4y ago
  As absurd as that story is, it's not as bad as some of the shadowbans some companies do. I have an old instagram account that I didn't use for a long time, and recently I logged in because I met a local musician and wanted to add her. Anything I try to do, I'm told "Try Again Later We restrict certain activity to protect our community." I have validated my phone number, the account is in my actual name, and I have provided current photos, etc. My understanding is that this is a shadowban. Why? Who knows. There's no support. Most amazingly, there are people who have followed me but I cannot follow them back. Same "Try again later". I really hope these companies die. But it's really a shame that the executives who make the decisions to run them like this don't also suffer financially. They always walk away with a golden parachute. I don't believe in hell, but if there is one I hope they get to explore it.
  • gspencley 4y ago
    I had a similar issue with Instagram. My wife and I are performing magicians, I wanted to create an account to post stuff related to our act. Before I could even log in I was informed that my account was suspended for violating their TOS. No useful information about the alleged violation, let alone no ability to remedy. Seeing as how it was a brand new account and I never got past the registration form, I don't know what I could have possibly violated. I contacted support, received some automated replies with instructions. After following those instructions I just never heard back. I know that Instagram is a "free" service but they obviously depend on having an active and healthy user-base ... so in that sense I guess they just doesn't want our business.
    • michaelteter 4y ago
      > My wife and I are performing magicians, Very cool! Don't meet many of those :) I had the same experience you describe with Facebook after I deleted my original account, waited years, and then had to recreate it to be able to get information about some event. I had somehow failed community standards before I had provided enough information to tell them anything. Support got me nowhere, similarly to TFA chat history. So I tried again some months later with a phone number or email instead of the other, and it worked. It's very discouraging to almost be forced to use a service like that to get along in the modern world. I would have paid to use it to avoid all the bs, at least for the period that I needed it.
• robg 4y ago
  Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long, long time. Does anyone here find eBay useful anymore?
  • snozolli 4y ago
    I buy stuff all the time from eBay. At this point, I have more trust in individual ebay sellers than I do in Amazon's weird, pooled product system whereby you have no idea if you're getting a legit product.
• askvictor 4y ago
  > Thanks for choosing eBay
• prepend 4y ago
  I wonder if there’s some perverse incentive to block accounts and there’s a “# accounts suspended for fraud” dashboard somewhere. Suspending new accounts is likely the easiest because they put up the least fuss.
• orangesite 4y ago
  …and BigTech™ continues to DOS itself out of existence, fine by me!
• panax 4y ago
  eBay must be run by Reddit mods
• snozolli 4y ago
  My complete guess is that their system thought you looked like the seller trying to artificially inflate their auction. A quick Google search says that as of 2021, only 12% of products are sold by auction. They're so obsessed with competing with Amazon with the "buy it now" system that auctions may be an afterthought.
• otterpro 4y ago
  I'm not sure what happened, but I make sure to not use VPN because a lot of e-commerce website will ban you if your IP is coming from VPN. Or it could simply be that the IP address happens to be on a blacklist, probably because someone was using that IP address for doing something fishy (which sucks even more since we most likely share IP address which is rotated by ISP). Or it could be geographical issue... I remember I couldn't even load Homedepot.com from oversea, as homedepot web server was blocking the entire country for hacking.
• irthomasthomas 4y ago
  I opened an eBay account and sold an item, buyer immediately canceled. eBay asked me to add a bank account again (it was already registered) even though the money was still held by eBay. Website would not let me add the bank account so eBay told the buyer to open a case, which was immediately settled in his favour, as expected. A few days later, on Christmas day, they banned me from selling. But kindly allowed me to continue buying. Fuck eBay.
• d23 4y ago
  Completely insane. I found recently when I tried to make a new twitter account to tweet at a local customer support account that I was immediately suspended. I didn't post anything incendiary or rude. My theory is that a lot of these sites have become so saturated that most people who are going to sign up already have, and the vast majority of new signups are all spam accounts. So the companies respond by making it more and more difficult to make a new account. The irony is that there is almost certainly another team at the company, if not multiple, dedicated to getting new user signups.
• maerF0x0 4y ago
  > If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever. As we become numerous (and our access to eachother grows) we also become more expendable. For every person they lockout there is 10 more signing up. Just wait till not only is the AI making the decision, but negotiating with it is the only remedy (no humans involved). I predict one of the next great atrocities, like the authoritarian ones of the 20th century, will actually be from a nameless faceless entity hooked up to a decision point that leads to life or death for individuals. It probably will be somewhat subtle, like maybe a decision about sustenance [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9402-if-you-want-a-picture-of-the-future-imagine-a https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9402-if-you-want-a-picture-...
• lakomen 4y ago
  Twitter isn't much different. Create new account, make a first post, banned. They want your phone number or to solve a puzzle, I did neither and uninstalled. Not as extreme as that chat support or lack thereof but it seems to be a trend.
  • gurchik 4y ago
    > banned. They want your phone number That isn't very surprising since Twitter was lying about accounts being locked for suspicious activity just so they could get your phone number for targeted advertisement. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2022/05/twitter-pay-150-million-penalty-allegedly-breaking-its-privacy-promises-again https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2022/05/twitter-p...
• Nextgrid 4y ago
  I've had a similar problem - signed up, provided all real details (they actually do a soft credit-check at least in the UK so that should've succeeded) and verified a phone number, listed some low-value specialised computer hardware that's definitely not a good bait for scammers (you'd be lucky if you got any buyers at all, so a scammer would definitely not list something like that if their objective was to scam) and yet the next day all the items were gone and account suspended.
• benj111 4y ago
  I've had this happen twice to me. Once when I started selling things from a long standing account. Again when I was selling and they just closed it. I got exactly the same lack of explanation each time. T&C's say that I can't open another account but my new accounts have the same address associated with it. Crappy situation when it's your business, although you are allowed to have multiple accounts.
• fennecfoxy 4y ago
  Happened to me, too. Now I just use Ebay as a guest when I need to, otherwise avoid. I got told it was irreversible after I: created an account, bought some dc/dc converter modules for like 10$.
• marcopicentini 4y ago
  In the war Humans vs Bots, the Bots won and they have taken our place.
• flancian 4y ago
  Hacker News new | threads | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit flancian (327) | logout I created an eBay account and bought an item, today I got indefinitely suspended (twitter.com/rafahari) 335 points by tommoor 4 hours ago | flag | hide | past | favorite | 209 comments Hacker News new | threads | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit flancian (327) | logout I created an eBay account and bought an item, today I got indefinitely suspended (twitter.com/rafahari) 335 points by tommoor 4 hours ago | flag | hide | past | favorite | 209 comments
• alun 4y ago
  I had the same experience buying a charger for my razer. I created an account to buy this very specific charger from a Chinese seller and my account was immediately closed a few hours later. After constant back and forth with their customer service, they basically said that my account was permanently banned from using their service and that I wouldn't be able to use eBay ever again. I kept asking what I did wrong and they wouldn't tell me. The representative that I was speaking to even knew that I did nothing wrong and was telling me that they were sorry because it was beyond their control and that their manager was telling them not to pursue the matter any further because they themselves could get into trouble. Fast forward about two years after the incident, I randomly remembered it and decided to ring up their customer service to see if they'd unban my account. The customer service rep unbanned with no problem and when I asked what the issue was, they told me that they sometimes ban new accounts with suspicious activity and that fresh new accounts have a very high chance of committing some sort of fraud. While it's nice that I got unbanned after two years, I will never be using eBay ever again if I can help it. Even if they offer the cheapest price on a product, I will purposefully pay more elsewhere.